Page 18 - pediatric_stroke_warriors_family_toolkit

STRONGER AFTER STROKE: PHYSICAL THERAPY

Pediatric physical therapy (PT) in all ages, promotes independence, increases participation, facilitates motor function
and development, improves strength and endurance, enhances learning opportunities, and eases challenges with daily
caregiving.

Physical therapists will use their expertise in movement and apply clinical reasoning through the process of examination,
evaluation, diagnosis, and intervention. Physical Therapy will address the child’s general strength and their abilities in
the areas of gross motor skills and mobility.
Pediatric physical therapy may include any of the following services as part of your child's plan of care:

• Developmental activities
• Movement and mobility
• Strengthening
• Motor learning
• Balance and coordination
• Recreation, play and leisure
• Adaptation of daily care activities
• Tone management
• E-Stim (a form of therapy that can help improve muscle function)
• Use of assistive technology
• Posture, positioning and lifting
• Orthotics, AFO’S, SMO’S

STRONGER AFTER STROKE: OCCUPATIONAL THERAPY

Occupation refers to all of the “jobs” that make up our daily life, whether you are child or a young adult. Occupational
Therapy (OT) will evaluate your child’s ability to perform self care, play, and school skills at an age-appropriate level. The
goal of OT is for the child to participate as actively and fully as possible in all areas - self care, play and school skills.

Through a comprehensive evaluation the therapist can begin to identify issues that interfere with a child’s performance.
This may include problems with strength, abnormal muscle tone, eye-hand coordination, visual perceptual skills and/or
sensory processing skills.

Pediatric OT may include a variety of approaches in assessing and treating children, including neuro-developmental
treatment (NDT), sensory processing, motor learning approaches, constraint therapy, kinesiotaping, sensory integrative
(SI) therapy, vision related therapies and feeding related therapy. Therapy is child directed and based on activities that
are meaningful and purposeful to that specific child.

Your child’s therapist may incorporate various tools and adaptive equipment to increase independence. Examples can
include specialized feeding utensils, adaptive scissors, writing utensils and hand splints. They may recommend and show
a parent and child how to use adaptations to clothing such as zipper pulls, button hooks and Velcro in order to allow a
child to learn further independence in self care.

18